Heavy Rain Review - 1/1

Heavy Rain for the Playstation 3

Who could this possibly be marketed towards?

Alright Heavy Rain! This has been a long time coming, so let’s drive straight into this bit- Oh wait, before we begin why don’t you go here. Just to set the mood a bit.

Alright! Heavy Rain! The ‘Interactive Entertainment’ setting to break new ground in the world of video games. And it’s actually pretty- Oh! Wait, while we’re setting the mood, go ahead and open up this while you’re at it.

 
Alright! Everyone settled in? Well Heavy Rain, huh? Believe it or not, it’s a video game. I swear! A whole bunch of angry people on the internet will try to tell you otherwise, but then you have other angry people (not nearly as angry) trying to tell you that it’s just a video game, and this is pretty true too. Everyone knew going in that this wasn’t going to change everything about this medium overnight. In fact, I would make the argument that it pushes things away from what we want them to be. But that doesn’t make it any less great. The game is still fun and irresistibly interesting. 

 
Spanning across five characters, Heavy Rain tells the story of the Origami Killer and his latest victim Shaun Mars, the son of Ethan Mars, a man who has lost a son before. In the pursuit of the killer and the still-living Shaun, the characters encounter situations that could possibly kill them and reactively change the story. YADDA YADDA YADDA. By now, the basics of the game are pretty well known. Dying in this game doesn’t throw you back to a checkpoint or quick save, the game just keeps rolling and the plot changes accordingly. What’s is that the game really is like no other in terms of tone. No other video game has been able to replicate such a melodramatic and serious atmosphere. So, it’s a huge hit to the experience as a whole when it falls short in this regard, and it does this quite a bit.

For one thing, the graphics are good. But often they aren’t good enough. The animations and details are perfect, but a few of the faces can only be described as “fuckin’ weird lookin’”. Personally, I wasn’t bothered until the inevitable sex scene (Heavy Rain is made by Quantic Dream, the guys who brought us Indigo Prophecy, the game where you fuck a corpse (technically)), which just plays out like two blow-up dolls being rubbed against each other as if by a 10-year-old who’s only seen HBO softcore porn.

Try finding this sexy. Or sympathizing with it at all, really.

But even worse than all this, probably the worst part of the game, are the voices. Occasionally good, mostly decent, but sporadically horrible, the American (I think?) characters were played by clearly French voice actors. This makes sense because Quantic Dream is a French developer, but holy shit is this discrepancy bothersome. Nearly every character has this weird pseudo-French accent, but only sometimes. Furthermore, no one can seem to figure out how to pronounce ‘origami’. Bluh?

Moving around can also cause a few hang ups early on. It’s explained a little poorly, but the movement stick just changes your direction, you have to keep holding that direction to move straight, even if your character is moving in the opposite direction.

 
Apart from this ancillary stuff, the game fires on all cylinders. The story takes its sweet time getting to the point, but it’s just long enough to settle you into the characters’ skins. All of which are interesting in their own way, by the way, with the glaring exception of Madison Paige, a photojournalist known for catching serial killers who just sort of lucks her way into the plot. Her introduction is silly and she suffers the most from weird side chapters that don’t really affect the main story, another small problem the game suffers from.

A mature and serious game.

Also, FBI Agent Jayden’s CSI glasses are practically worth the price of admission. Never has a game made me feel so much like an actual investigator, combing the crime scene and using a blend of technology and intellect to catch the killer. Which makes this a good time to mention that the game isn’t comprised of the standard instant death QTEs. If you miss a few, it really doesn’t matter. A few things change here and there, and in a few situations, you certainly will die, but really gameplay can be described as QTEs guiding an adventure game.

So fucking cool.

Hey have you been paying attention? I’ve been making a point this entire time. Much like this review, Heavy Rain takes a bit to get started, it requires players to buy into it, just a little bit, and it’ll (hopefully) entertain you once it all starts paying off near the end. Honestly, I was so into this game, that I nearly cried at the end, when I managed to get everybody to the end alive, solved the crime, and messed up two (stupid fucking) SIXAXIS QTEs. I could see my end coming, an inevitable death, I almost threw the controller across the room, rather than keep pressing forward and sending this person to an undeserved death. It all played out and I couldn’t help but tear up. Meanwhile, my younger sister was watching and said something like THAT IS SO WRONG, and I punched her in the face for interrupting my moment (not really, don’t worry(I really did though, don’t worry(seriously though, it was just a love tap, don’t worry))).

Bottom line, Heavy Rain is great. It’s an experience. It’s a neat story with a killer twist. It is a VIDEO. GAME. But it’s a pretty good one.

Heavy Rain just barely  falls with a one out of one.